[peppercorn (OP)]

Is the IPCC taking enough care in publishing its figures or is politics getting in the way of science?

UN climate body admits 'mistake' on Himalayan glaciers

[Mazurka]

Find me a report of similar length and complexity with a similar number of contributors that does not contain a tpyo or misprunt...

In answer to the question - it is hard to say - the fallout from the CRU nonsense (AKA Climategate) appears to have simply reduced the number of fence sitters rather than persuaded anyone with a considered view (whether for or against AGW).  I suspect this will have less effect.

The most amusing thing is the so called sceptical elements of the blogosphere (including the likes of Steve McIntyre) had failed to spot this evidence of fraudulent bad science (or whatever they are calling it) despite having (claimed to have) gone through AR4 with a fine toothed comb.

Anyway, this is nothing compared to the global scientific conspiracy that http://www.icecap.us/ have uncovered.  Apparently alongside Hadley, NOAA and NCDC are manipulating data too. (I did think this accusation was from some onnion article or similar)

[LeeE]

Whether you think the IPCC has suffered any damage [to its reputation and value] depends upon what you thought the IPCC was in the first place.

The IPCC isn't a scientific organisation, insofar as it does no research of its own, and is more like a PR agency, choosing which scientific reports or 'facts' it publicises and which ones it ignores, in much the same way that the CRU appears to have operated.

The prediction that the Himalayan glaciers could all melt by 2035 was made by a single Indian scientist (who has subsequently retracted the prediction), as an off-the-cuff remark in a 1999 telephone conversation with a journalist from New Scientist magazine.  The prediction was never published in a formal scientific paper.  The World Wildlife Fund subsequently quoted the prediction from the New Scientist article as fact in some of their propaganda and it appears that the IPCC picked the 'fact' up from the WWF publication.

[peppercorn (OP)]

Find me a report of similar length and complexity with a similar number of contributors that does not contain a tpyo or misprunt...

Liking your work their Mazurka!

In answer to the question - it is hard to say - the fallout from the CRU nonsense (AKA Climategate) appears to have simply reduced the number of fence sitters rather than persuaded anyone with a considered view (whether for or against AGW).  I suspect this will have less effect.

Agreed. Although personally I have been surprised of late, by how many acquaintances of mine are at best fence sitters.
In fact, lately, I have heard phrases like "I don't believe in global warming" from fairly unexpected (& apparently educated, but non-scientific) sources - people who appear to treat the subject in the same way as religious faith (ie. simply an inner conviction).

Anyway, this is nothing compared to the global scientific conspiracy that http://www.icecap.us/ have uncovered.  Apparently alongside Hadley, NOAA and NCDC are manipulating data too. (I did think this accusation was from some onnion article or similar)

I like to draw the comparison with the fake-moon-landings camp that routinely surface & quickly get trounced. The thing with a conspiracy is that every individual involved must be getting reward for their silence - for years after.
If all these researchers were really routinely manipulating great swaths of data to propagate a hoax on this scale, how are they all (many 1000's) benefiting from it? Plus not one has worked out a way to get rich from the exposure...

The prediction that the Himalayan glaciers could all melt by 2035 was made by a single Indian scientist (who has subsequently retracted the prediction), as an off-the-cuff remark in a 1999 telephone conversation with a journalist from New Scientist magazine.  The prediction was never published in a formal scientific paper.  The World Wildlife Fund subsequently quoted the prediction from the New Scientist article as fact in some of their propaganda and it appears that the IPCC picked the 'fact' up from the WWF publication.

This case seems to mostly be a story of poor journalism and lazy researchers.  Shame though - another thing for the man-in-the-street to dismiss sneeringly.

[litespeed]

pepper

Himalaya-Glacier-Gate (HGC) is but one more, though ironically small, IPCC wolf's foot. Or did I mean to say fox paw?  But these things keep accumulating like a Chinese water torture drip freezing to bottom of an endlessly growing ice cycle. And no melting in site. And its comical. The series of errors leading to the embarrassment looks like a child's game of telephone, but with PHD's instead of sixth graders.

And its not even the latest drip! Just this very day I read, concerning East Anglia: "The Information Commissioner’s Office is now seeking to change the [freedom of information law] to allow prosecutions if a complaint is made more than six months after a breach."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7004936.ece

Climate change is now something like number twenty three on the American Band Stand list of most important issues of the day. No dancing around the fact these little things, plus an uncomfortable Winter, have not done the IPCC any good.

[yor_on]

Well Peppercorn, we’ve all had a cold winter right, well most of us have. And for those countries not used to it, it’s a really bad surprise.

Now, as I expect it to be we’re gonna get more cold and snow in Europe. And as the weather patterns change with the winds, ocean currents and accumulating heat we will continue to have freaky weather in the summer too. To put it simple, it seems as one side of the globe, more or less, will have drought and loss of sweet water resources, with the other side experiencing the opposite, more or less. It’s not nearly that cut and clear of course, but if we treat the Earth as a ‘semi closed’ system there will be a certain amount of rain f. ex for the whole of Earth, and that rain have to fall out somewhere.  Now, why did I call it ‘semi closed’? That’s because we do have one ‘heat regulator’, space.

But space can only regulate the layer closest to it. That’s very important to understand. There could be two ‘main’ ways Earth regulate its heat. The one that we might think to be the simplest is that the heat radiates out the same way it goes in, bouncing straight out. But our problem is that it doesn’t, well it’s not really a ‘problem’ because if Earth worked that way we wouldn’t exist, it would be hot in the days and extremely cold at nights. Instead the heat radiates out at different wavelengths, mostly as IR (infrared radiation), and on its way it gets bound to the molecules making up our atmosphere. That effect is called the ‘Greenhouse effect’. Let us take a look at two different planets and their respective greenhouse effect.

----Quote---

Venus at 90% CO2 and with a (Relative to Earth sea-level)', Temperature of 477° C.  
The Greenhouse Effect is 523° C. Without Greenhouse effect -46° C.
Surface pressure relative Earth is 90
And Earth at ~0.04% CO2 and ~1% H20 with a (Relative to Earth sea-level), Temperature of 15° C.    
The Greenhouse Effect is 33° C. Without Greenhouse Effect -18° C.
Surface pressure 1 (Earth standard).

As it is, with all other factors held equal, the total Greenhouse Effect on Earth at the present time produces a warming of about 35°C (63°F) over what the temperature would be without any such effect at all. That much of a temperature difference, of course, is a critical one. Without it, Earth would be largely a frozen planet.

The Greenhouse Effect, then, is partly dependent on an enclosing substance being transparent to incoming visible radiation and opaque to outgoing infrared radiant heat. It is fortunate for us that the Earth's atmosphere does not form a very effective greenhouse. If it were as effective as glass, the average temperature would rise to the point that living on Earth would become intolerable. As it turns out, oxygen and nitrogen are largely transparent to infrared, allowing the warm ground to radiate a significant amount of infrared energy into outer space. In addition, atmospheric circulation carries heat away from the surface quite effectively .

On the other hand, water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane are much more opaque in the infrared, and their presence tends to produce an additional Greenhouse Effect that is dependent on the concentration of these gases. Clouds are also extremely effective blocks to outgoing infrared radiation. This explains why the coldest nights are those clear, crisp times when there are no clouds and the humidity is low. As we mentioned earlier, carbon dioxide accounts for only about 0.03% of the atmosphere, but its concentration has been increasing for some time due to the activities of mankind. This has raised concerns about possible long-term effects on climate. We shall return to this subject in the next unit.

---End of quote---

There are three main heat transport processes – Radiation, atmospheric convection and ocean currents. Together they redistribute and determine local weather and climate all around the world. And it is only as the layers of atmosphere get saturated (filled) with heat that it will wander up to the next layer of the atmosphere, well, more or less. Of course, nothing is as simple as it seems when it comes to climate, but I’m sure that all knowing any sort of non-linear system would agree on the complexity of them.

It’s not that simple, but for this example you can think of earth as an onion. There are layers upon layers of air circumventing Earth and it’s only as they reach a certain point of saturation the heat will start to saturate the next layer. And it’s an accumulating process, meaning that it builds up from ground zero up to the last layer next to space. But as the layers grows due to increasing kinetic energy in those molecules (heat) and due to us releasing more molecules through the grounds hidden resources, oil, methane, etc. each layer will accumulate more heat than the first time, releasing it to the next layer. Can you see the process growing? And remember that it’s only as the heat is at its utmost layer Earth will start to balance its heat.

Anyway, as it seems to be now that means a lot of water in Europe, falling out as rain and humidity in the summer and as snow and ice in the winter. And what I think we are seeing now is the beginning of a ‘tipping’. A ‘tipping’ is a description we normally observe when  a non- linear system falls over into a ‘opposite’ position. And a non-linear system is also a system steered under ‘chaos’ meaning that it contain ‘infinites’ unable for us to foresee.

You might think of ‘chaos’ as a patchwork of ordered and unordered systems mixed together slowly building up to a change. A little like entropy can and will contain both ordered patches building order, as well as those ‘unordered’ patches ‘equalling out’, where no new work will be done thereafter. The idea behind the second law of entropy is that as long as the ‘patches’ where no ‘new work’ can be done is larger than the patches ordering themselves into ‘work done’ the law is working as it should, so, if you like you might see it as a ‘chaos’ hiding here too.

And linear system’s is what our mathematics and engineering, until recently, have been occupied with. The whole Victorian era and our industrial revolution were founded on linear concepts, straight lines and finite solutions to the problems. That why we put such an importance on finding those so called ‘cut outs’ on the infinites we find nowadays, in QM and in our macroscopic world too. Those ‘cut outs’ is our working equivalent to the older ‘finite solutions’ giving us a 'best answer' to a question/problem.

To me Earth isn’t a linear system, Earth is a non-linear system and a ‘tipping’ is, and will be, a fairly quick process when it comes to be. Ask anyone working with a non-linear system and you will get the same answer when it comes to the speed of a tipping. How fast I don’t know of course, but as a guess I recon that we will see a fairly big change under the next fifty years. And the whole discussion about if the globe is warming up is, as far as I can see, already answered statistically. So that one I won’t even touch. Then there’s the question if it’s our fault. And there I say. Yes, it is.

And our manmade Co2 and methane is the main ‘forces’ driving it. Now, either I am right, and then there are things we can do about it, or, I am wrong about this, and then we’re buggered, all of us are. Because if those ‘forcing’s’ would be wrong, then I don’t see what we can do to milder the consequences of global warming. So you better hope that I’m right there. Then we come to the demands put on climate scientists to always be correct, and to ‘know it all.’

That sort of reasoning is sheer lunatics. We’re talking about a whole world. In our older Jules Verne type of ‘linear world’ that thinking might had seemed to serve its purpose, but we don’t live in that world, we never did. The world we live in is a non-linear one, and simple small forcing's can, and will, have unforeseen consequences. Some of them so unknown to us that we might not even see, or recognize, them as they happen.

So to expect those climate researchers to always be in the ‘know’ is sheer stupidity, and for them to say that they are is also dangerous. What they are doing now is taking the first tentative steps into the unknown. But we already have come quite some way there, but as global warming accelerates, and it will accelerate, we will still be some steps behind, and that’s a promise.

So what is happening now?

Here’s an excerpt from. “If It’s That Warm, How Come It’s So Damned Cold?”
By James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato, Ken Lo.

------Quote-

“The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year in the 130 years of global instrumental temperature records, in the surface temperature analysis of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The Southern Hemisphere set a record as the warmest year for that half of the world.

Why are some people so readily convinced of a false conclusion, that the world is really experiencing a cooling trend? That gullibility probably has a lot to do with regional short-term temperature fluctuations, which are an order of magnitude larger than global average annual anomalies. Yet many lay people do understand the distinction between regional short-term anomalies and global trends.

The bottom line is this: there is no global cooling trend. For the time being, until humanity brings its greenhouse gas emissions under control, we can expect each decade to be warmer than the preceding one. Weather fluctuations certainly exceed local temperature changes over the past half century. But the perceptive person should be able to see that climate is warming on decadal time scales. ”

---End of quote---

And the  Environmental Defense Fund has this to say.

---Quote--

“Ocean surface temperatures worldwide have risen on average 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0.5 degrees Celsius, and ocean waters in many tropical regions have risen by almost 2 degrees F (1 degree C) over the past century. This is 30 times the amount of heat that has been added to the atmosphere, a significant amount even though the ocean has a lot more mass than the atmosphere.”

--End of quote-

Now what does that mean for us?
For one it will mean severe storms.

---Quotes---

“Hurricanes are storms that form near the equator and gain wind speeds of at least 74 miles per hour. They get their power from warm ocean water. For a hurricane to occur, the surface of the ocean must be at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit. This is why the U.S. hurricane season is from June to November, when ocean waters in the North Atlantic are warmest.

Peter Webster, Judy Curry and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology found that the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes around the world has doubled over the past 35 years. Category 4 storms can produce 250 times more damage than Category 1 storms — a staggering increase that ramps up the number of homes and people at risk.

Patrick Michaels and his colleagues at the University of Virginia found that there may be a tipping point of 83 degrees Fahrenheit for hurricanes to jump to a Category 3 or higher, adding more grist to the link. “

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of these greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has soared to levels higher than at any time in the last 420,000 years, warming the earth on average by 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degree Celsius) over the last century.  Oceans and forests naturally absorb CO2 and are sometimes referred to as "carbon sinks." Seawater also absorbs heat — it can store four times more heat per unit mass than air. In modern times, human activities have pumped CO2 into the atmosphere at a dramatic rate.

The oceans absorbed huge amounts of both CO2 and heat in the last forty years, but not enough to keep heat and CO2 from building up in the atmosphere. What scientists do know is that even if we cut our emissions of heat-trapping gases today, it would take centuries for gases now in the air to fall to more historically balanced levels. And a growing scientific consensus suggests that changes are afoot in global ocean dynamics that could have profound ecological impacts. Even with major reductions in greenhouse gas pollution, significant changes loom for seabird and fish communities, ocean circulation patterns and basic processes of ocean chemistry. 

Without emissions cuts, the effects will be even worse. Another headlining study in the June issue of Science comes from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Scientist Tim Barnett reported, "This is perhaps the most compelling evidence yet that global warming is happening right now and it shows that we can successfully simulate its past and likely future evolution." The findings projected water shortages in the western U.S. and western China and the Andes due to changing rainfall patterns and less snowpack. 

Two other studies from earlier this year also published in Science show that even if we were to stabilize greenhouse gas at 2000 levels, the earth's temperature and sea levels would continue to rise over the next hundred years. “

-----End of quotes---

[yor_on]

But it’s been cold? Doesn’t that mean the opposite?

Let’s look at NOAA figures for September-November 2009

---Quote----

“The combined global land and ocean surface temperature during September-November 2009 tied with 2004 as the fourth warmest on record. During the season, warmer-than-average temperatures engulfed much of the planet's surface, with the exception of cooler-than-average conditions across central Asia, southern South America, and parts of the central contiguous United States. The seasonal temperature for the worldwide ocean surface also tied with 2004 as the fourth warmest on record, 0.50 °C (0.90 °F) above the 20th century average.”

The worldwide land surface temperature tied with 1990 as the eighth warmest November on record. During November, warmer-than-average temperatures were present across large portions of the world's land areas with the exception of cooler-than-average conditions across Alaska, southern South America, and a large area of cooler-than-average conditions across Asia. The November 2009 worldwide land surface temperature anomaly was 0.82 °C (1.48 °F) above the 20th century average of 5.9 °C (42.6 °F).

In the Southern Hemisphere, the November 2009 average temperature for the Hemisphere as a whole (land and ocean surface combined) was 0.60 °C (1.08 °F) above the 20th century average the warmest November on record. The Southern Hemisphere land only temperature during November 2009 also represented the warmest November on record, with an anomaly of 1.05 °C (1.89 °F) above the 20th century average. The November 2009 Southern Hemisphere ocean temperature ranked as the second warmest on record, behind 1997.

According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), November 2009 was abnormally warm across southeastern Australia. New South Wales and Victoria set new records for the largest mean temperature anomaly ever recorded for an Australian state with anomalies of 4.61 °C (8.30 °F) and 4.36 °C (7.85 °F) above average, respectively.

Australia as a whole, had its warmest November on record with a mean temperature anomaly of 1.87 °C (3.37 °F) above average. However, maximum temperatures across Australia were 2.12 °C (3.82 °F) above average resulting in the second highest maximum temperature, behind 2006, with a maximum temperature anomaly of 2.17 °C (3.91 °F) above the 1961-1990 average. Statewide records were also broken, with New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania, surpassing the previous largest maximum temperature anomaly recorded for an Australian state. The highest minimum temperature record for the continent was also broken, with an anomaly of 1.61 °C (2.90) above average.

---End of quote--------

Now, we can quibble about statistics and evade the subject, or we can accept those data as coming from people doing their best to prognosticate what may lie ahead, using what data they’ve collected around the world.

And I haven’t touched over-fishing, acidity due to the CO2 accumulated in our oceans, killing fish and reefs, or the oxygen free waters that are growing every year. Some of those problems we might solve, but for what we are, humans.

So what about those glaciers then, that was supposed to melt 2035? Well, a really stupid mistake getting into a three thousand page document, and furthermore accepted by NASA too as they also had a reference to it. That’s what happens when an organisation tries to do its best for a long time. People start to trust in the system, expecting all papers to have been peer reviewed. The problem here was that this paper originally wasn’t amongst those seen as the most critical, its glacier evaluation notwithstanding. It shouldn’t have happened, and my guess is that the next ‘peer evaluation’ will be extremely stringent.

That is a good thing of course, but as the IPCC:s forecasts, as up to now, always have had to be revised upwards to reflect a more serious situation than predicted, due to their inherent conservatism, it worries me a little. It’s better to tell it as it is than to try to please those not believing.

As for errors? How about the 'deniers' publicly correcting theirs
They don't as far as I've seen on the net. When one way won't work for them they just stop publishing it and jumps to another..

---Quote---

In the IPCC Fourth Assessment of 2007, Working Group II stated:

Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world. ... The likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005).

This statement is in error. To clarify the actual situation:

1. Himalayan rates of recession are not exceptional.

2. The first “2035” is from WWF 2005, which cites a news story about an unpublished study that does not estimate a date for disappearance of Himalayan glaciers.

3. The second “2035”, an apparent typographic error, is not in WWF 2005, but can be traced circumstantially to a rough estimate of the shrinkage of all extrapolar glaciers (excluding those in basins of internal drainage) between the present and 2350.

4. In conflict with knowledge of glacier-climate relationships, disappearance by 2035 would require a 25-fold acceleration during 1999–2035 from the loss rate estimated for 1960–1999.

5. This was a bad error. It was a really bad paragraph, and poses a legitimate question about how to improve IPCC’s review process. It was not a conspiracy. The error does not compromise the IPCC Fourth Assessment, which for the most part was well reviewed and is highly accurate.

----End of Quote---

What one have to understand reading this, is that even tough the Himalayan rates of recession isn’t exceptional, as compared to the rest of the worlds glaciers, they are still bad, just as bad as with all other glaciers around the world. The problem in Asia being that there are so incredibly many people relying on the freshwater coming from those glaciers.

So what are happening with those glaciers? One of the best papers I’ve read is slightly old, made long before that stupid mistake. It’s called ‘TOWARDS CURBING GLOBAL VILLAGE WARMING: NEPAL'S CONTRIBUTION TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE’

By Diwakar Poudyal, MSc.Ag. Econ.

You should really read it. It’s from around 2003 but it’s still very good. It looks at both the global and regional impacts and it’s well written. The guy speaks to you as you were sitting beside him. I will just cite some facts from it.

---Quote---Glacier facts from 2003--

The Khumbu Glacier, popular climbing route to the summit of Mt. Everest, has retreated over 5 km since 1953  (UNEP, 2002). Since the Himalayan region overall has warmed by about 1 C since the 1970s, glaciers in the Himalayas like else where are retreating. The average rate is 15 m per year (Geological Survey of India, 1999). It is consistent with the rapid warming recorded at Himalayan climate stations since the 1970s. Winter stream flow for the Baspa glacier basin has increased 75% since 1966 and local winter temperatures have warmed, suggesting increased glacier melting in winter (Kulkarini et al., 2002).

As Himalayan glaciers melt glacial lakes are swelling and in danger of catastrophic flooding eminent. The average glacial retreat for Bhutan was 30-40 m per year (ICIMOD, 2002). Glaciers in Patagonia in Argentina have receded by an average of almost 1.5 km over the last 13 years (Wessels et al., 2001; Painter, 2001). There has been an increase in maximum, minimum, and average daily temperatures of more than 1 C over the past century in southern Patagonia, east of the Andes.

Since 1947 Australia's 34 glaciers (Heard Island) have decreased by 11% in area and 12% in volume, with half the loss occurring in the 1980s. Air temperature has risen 0.7 C between 1947 and 2001 (Pockely, 2001; Reuters, 2001a). During 1959-1988, 1,081 glaciers in the Pamir-Altai disappeared with increased temperatures in the mountains of Kyrgyztan by 0.5-1.5 C since the 1950s (UNEP, 2000). Similarly of the six glaciers in the Venezuelan Andes in 1972, only 2 remain, and scientists predict that these will be gone within the next 10 years (OSU, 2001).

Glaciers in the mountains of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru show similar rapid rates of retreat (Schubert, 1999). Temperature records in other regions of the Andes show a significant warming of about 0.33 C per decade since the mid-1970s (Vuille and Bradley, 2000). Pity enough, the ice of the Mount Kilmanjaro of Tanzania is projected to disappear by 2020. 82% of its ice has already disappeared since 1912, with about one-third melting in just the last dozen years. At this rate, all of the ice will be gone in about 15 years (OSU, 2001).

Scientists hypothesize that less snow on the mountain during the rainy season decreases the surface reflective ness, leading to higher rates of absorption of heat and increased ice melt (Hardy, 2002). Similarly, since the 1990s, glacier area of Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda has decreased by about 75% (Kaser, 1999).
The continent of Africa warmed by 0.5 C during the past century, and the five warmest years in Africa have all occurred since 1988.

Similarly in the north Americas, the Athabasca Glacier in the Canadian Rockies has retreated 0.5 km in the last 60 years and has thinned dramatically since the 1950s-60s (State of the Canadian Cryosphere, 2002). In British Columbia the Wedgemont Glacier retreated hundreds of meters since 1979, as the climate warmed at a rate of 1.1 C per century, twice the global average (BC Ministry of Water, Land, and Air Protection, 2002). In Alaska a study of 67 glaciers showed that between the mid-1950s and mid-1990s the glaciers thinned by an average of about 0.5 m per year. Repeat measurements on 28 of those glaciers show that from the mid-1990s to 2000-2001 the rate of thinning had increased to nearly 1.8 m per year (Arendt et al., 2002).

---End of quote----2003 (?)---

For an update on the situation in Asia I would suggest you to read ‘Background support presentation for NASA “Black Carbon and Aerosols” press conference associated with Fall AGU, Dec. 14, 2009‘. It’s called “Satellite-era glacier changes in High Asia” And there you can see actual satellite coverage too.

---

[LeeE]

Venus at 90% CO2 and with a mean surface Temperature of 477° C.  
The Greenhouse Effect is 523° C. Without Greenhouse effect -46° C.
Surface pressure relative Earth is 90% (very near)

Who are you quoting there yor_on?  Those figures simply don't make any sense at all.

How are the values of 477° C and 523° C reconciled?  And what does that -46° C figure refer to - the night-side surface temperature with no atmosphere at all?  And then the surface pressure of Venus is certainly not 90% of Earth's; it's about 92 times Earth's surface pressure, which I think everyone will agree is far from being 'very near' to Earth's.

These figures are all nonsense, wherever they've come from.

[yor_on]

I had them downloaded, give me some minutes and I'll check where I found them. The problem with not being on the net constantly LeeE, I download those pages I use nowadays

==
Okay, I took it from this page. THE ATMOSPHERE you will find a table there from where I lifted it out.

==
As for how it's reconciled
Sorry, i didn't see what you meant first there.

But you're right, I was sloppy there, I should have wrote 'Surface Pressure (Relative to Earth sea-level)' I'll change that.. Okay I see the problem, it was me using a percentage sign where it shouldn't had been. Sh*.. (and then drawing the wrong conclusion from my own mistake, 'very near' indeed

I should have left that one alone, but it was kind of late

The next time I'll  just 'import' the table instead.
The danger with lifting out figures instead of just copy & paste.

As for the temperature; For Venus 477 + 46 = 523 C

==
But I'm in good company here. Me and IPCC both made some errors )

[peppercorn (OP)]

Well Peppercorn, we’ve all had a cold winter right, well most of us have. And for those countries not used to it, it’s a really bad surprise.

....etc ....etc

Blimely. When I last looked this post had gone quiet - away for a few days and, well...

Just to clarify I'm not denying CC (or our likely calculability) - just wanted to see what people thought about the bad publicity aspect.


Re: the UEA being beyond freedom of speech - well the emails were gathered illegally, so no contest.  Personally I'd prefer to see a longer timeframe for complaints on blocking FoS, but universities get bombarded with requests all the time, so it's not practical to honour them all.

[litespeed]

yor_on - You wrote: "What one have to understand reading this, is that even tough the Himalayan rates of recession isn’t exceptional, as compared to the rest of the worlds glaciers, they are still bad..."

Thats off topic. The topic question goes to IPCC credibility, which has been melting for years. This recent cascade of childish mistakes concerning the glacier report is just one more embarrasment. In fact, the IPCC is lucky the statute of limitations has run out on criminal infractions at East Anglia. Otherwise Jones et al might very well be under criminal indictment.

Incidentally, that statute may very well be extended by law in the not so distant future.

PEPPER - You wrote: "Personally I'd prefer to see a longer timeframe for complaints on blocking FoS, but universities get bombarded with requests all the time, so it's not practical to honour them all."  If you takes the citizen's dime you consent to the citizen's inquiry. Period. If East Anglia doesn't want citizen review, it should find private financing.

I am not being flippant in this regard. Organizations subject FoI should structure and catalog subject information in such a way as to be readily retrievable to satisfy such requests. After all, they are subject to such requests as a matter of law. They do not have descretionary privilege on the matter.

In any event this does not seem to have been the problem at East Anglia. Apparently the data was readily available to such an extent they needed to delete it in order to ensure it would not be disclosed.

Also, at least in the US, evidence obtained illegally is only excluded from trial if it was obtained by government entity. For instance, I beak into a house to steal the silverware and in so doing uncover seventy five freshly dismembered bodies. Fearing I might be the seventy sixth, I dial 911 as I flee the scene. If I drag a dismembered leg or a vivid polaroid album with me on the way out, so much the better.

[yor_on]

Litespeed? What cascade of childish mistakes?

How many do you have?

[litespeed]

The erroneous IPCC discussion of the glaciers was the end result of something like half a dozen intermediate publications. Apparently each one of them simply incorporated something or other from a previous publication that lead back to nothing of consequence in the matter at all. I will see if I can recover the list, and will post it for you if I can.

--------------

I was WAY wrong about the number of intermediate publications. The actual cascade is just as humorous though. The information originated as a misquote of a single individual scientist interviewed for an article that then appeared in an obscure (to me) magazine a decade ago. Or some such....

1) "... it now appears that the estimate about Himalayan glacial melt was based on a decade-old interview of one climate scientist in a science magazine, The New Scientist..."

2) "hard scientific evidence to support that figure is lacking."

3) "... Dr. Syed Hasnain, a glacier specialist with the government of the Indian state of Sikkim and currently a fellow at the TERI research institute in Delhi, said in an e-mail message that he was “misquoted” about the 2035 estimate in The New Scientist article.

4) "... He has more recently said that his research suggests that only small glaciers could disappear entirely."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/science/earth/19climate.html?scp=1&sq=himalayan&st=cse